THE great church of the Holy Sepulchre is the most remarkable and interesting monument of twelfth-century art and history in the world—the secondary churches of Jerusalem, chiefly built by the Crusaders, also attract the attention of the architectural pilgrim.

De Vogüé, in his Églises de la Terre Sainte, 1860, gives a description and plans of nearly all of these remains of the wonderful crusading kingdom, and such few monuments as escaped his notice have since been planned and fully investigated by more recent visitors to the Holy City. The following notes are now offered as a résumé of the past fifty years' studies on the subject, and as a means of affording some idea of the present condition and probable future fate of these most interesting monuments.

Our principal source of information as to the condition of the monuments of Jerusalem at the time of the Crusades is the laborious description of his pilgrimage written by John of Wurzburg, at the beginning of the twelfth century. Although considered of no great importance by the historians of the Crusades, he certainly gives the most interesting account of the mediæval Holy City.

THE HARAM

The ancient churches of Jerusalem are mostly the property of the different Christian sects, or have been turned into mosques. The great and famous mosque of the Haram esh-Sherif (the Noble Sanctuary) is in a sense the most important of these ecclesiastical monuments, although its Christian character has been but of the most evanescent and transitory kind at different periods of its history.